Product Guarantee’s

Do you stand behind what you sell with a guarantee? It goes without saying that every business should, where possible, offer a guarantee to back up claims made about the product or service that it sells.

Of course there are some businesses where this is not practical as in the media. If you are placing an advert with a publication then you cannot have a guarantee to get results. Guarantees can be given that the publication was printed and distributed to an exact number of recipients, but that is as far as it goes. This can also be backed by various audits, but whether the advertiser got a result or not very much depended on what was being sold, the item value and the subject line.

If however your product or service does lend itself to a guarantee, how long do you offer? 30 days? 60 Days? 90 days? How about 1 year? 5 years? Even a lifetime?

Now, before you fall off your chair laughing at the idea of giving a long guarantee, consider this.

Imagine you are a prospective customer looking to buy a product or service. You want what is being sold and you note that the vendor gives a 30 day guarantee. What are you going to do? Given the limited time frame of this guarantee, are you going to really test it hard. You want to see if the product is rigorous or whether it ‘breaks’.

If you have bought a course or information product you are either going to really test it or, if you are a little naughty, you may even copy the course contents and then request a refund. It’s not honest but it happens and you could get away with it once or twice.

Now, however, instead of the 30 day guarantee you decide to give say a 5 or 10 year guarantee. What is going to happen?

First of all the purchaser is much more relaxed. After all they have five or ten years to call on the guarantee – so they are in no hurry. If, in say three or four years the product or service breaks down, the buyer will likely figure that they have had good value out of the item and not seek to rely on the guarantee.

But let’s say they do want to invoke the guarantee. First they will need to prove that the product was bought from you (and not someone else). They will therefore need proof of purchase. Do they still have it? Chances are that it has been lost. And with no proof of purchase you cannot be expected to honour a guarantee for a product that could have been bought anywhere – unless of course you were the sole seller.

What also happens in this fast moving age is that the purchaser may also have forgotten where they bought the product or service. And if that is the case you will never know.

Therefore, far from costing you more money, a long term guarantee will likely get you more sales in the initial instance and fewer redemptions later on.